History and Tradition
History and Tradition of SPC IEEE Region 8 Student Paper Contest (SPC) is a traditional, long lasting activity in Region 8. It is an important student, but also academic and technical activity. R8 SPC 2011 finals are being organized in Lisbon, Portugal. Although written data are not available from the very begin­ning, it is known that history of SPC was a long one. It is also known that SPC was already in Portugal in 80’s at the R8 MELECON Conference and that winner was a Portuguese team of students. Starting from 1999, existing SPC data could be found at IEEE Region 8 SAC/SPC page www.r8sac.org/index.php/spc.

Main Goals of SPC Activities
SPC was and is an important IEEE topic in many aspects, just to mention some of them: (a) SPC is an excellent occasion for personal leadership and strong involvement of student members in a prospective IEEE scientific/technical activity; (b) SPC is a very good reason and chance for activating and keeping active Student Branches; (c) it makes possible further promotion of IEEE among students; (d) it is a nice possibility for IEEE members with non-student grades - the SPC Committee (Jury) members, their colleagues (associate review­ers), Student Branch Advisers, professors - student mentors and many others to be involved and to participate in such an important and interesting IEEE student activity.

SPC General Organization
Once each year, each Student Branch may hold and organize a local Student Paper Contest under its own responsibility. The organization of local SPC generally means that contest should be announced publicly in advance and that all submitted papers are locally reviewed by qualified specialists. Student Branch Advisers should be fully involved in all local SPC activities, as well as all other local IEEE officers (Section Chairs, Chapter Chairs, student representatives in Sections Executive Committees,…). The winner(s) of each local Student Branch Contest may compete for the Region 8 Contest, held within the Region limits. A Branch may submit one paper for every 100 branch members or part thereof, with a maximum of three papers. An inter-national jury is grading the written papers without knowledge of the identity of the authors and of their schools, and is deciding which papers will be accepted for presentation at the R8 Oral finals.

SPC Student Participants
Only IEEE student members (but not doctoral students) could be authors of a paper submitted for SPC. Each student author must be a member of an IEEE Student Branch at the time of the original submission of the paper to the local Branch Contest, and a member (student or not) of the IEEE at the time of the oral presentation. The work presented has to be completed before the student receives the engineering degree that entitles him/her to start preparing a doctoral thesis. Character of the Papers Paper should cover technical and engineering aspects of a subject reasonably within or related to the areas with which the IEEE is concerned with. The work need not be original in engineering content, but should be original in treatment and concise in coverage of the author’s contribution to the subject. SPC 2011 was announced immediately after the end of the 2010 Contest. The deadline for the 2011 IEEE Region 8 Student Paper Contest was December 15 2010. The oral finals will take place on April 27 2011, as the part of IEEE Region 8 International Conference EUROCON 2011, April 27-29 2011, Lisbon, Portugal. There were quite a number of various motivation and promotion activities within the SPC 2011 campaign. As the result, 32 papers were submitted, 29 accepted and graded, contestants were from 17 Sections and 22 Student Branches/Institutions. The international Jury: Prof. George Paunovic, Serbia – Chair, Prof. Carlos Lopez- Barrio, Spain, Prof. Andrzej Pacut, Poland, Prof. Ali El-Mousa, Jordan, Prof. Manuel de Medeiros Silva, Portugal, was appointed to select five papers for the Oral finals and, after the Oral finals, to decide about the three winners.

After anonymous grading, Jury had selected five papers for the oral finals, from (alphabetic order) Karlsruhe Institute of Technology SB, Germany Sec­tion, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven SB, Benelux Section, National School of Engineers of Sfax (ENIS) SB, Tunisia Section, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering SB, University of Tehran, Iran Section, University of the Witwatersrand SB, Johannesburg, South Africa Section.

During the Oral finals, one of the authors of each finalist’s papers will make a short presentation of their/his paper, Jury and audience will put some questions, and Jury will decide about the three best papers and awards. All finalists’ papers will be included in EUROCON 2011 Proceedings, IEEE Explore base and will be posted to SPC Internet pages.

My best congratulations and thanks to all IEEE Region 8 SPC 2011 participants!

Prof. George Paunovic

IEEE Region 8 SPC Coordinator